A Premise Salesman with Some Things on His Mind

Your Kid Has Autism? Start a Business!

We have a new poster child for myopic conservativism: Sher Venezuela, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Delaware. The self-duped fool spoke tonight at the Republican convention and spewed the out-of-touch rhetoric of far-right ignorance.

Sher tells us that when faced with high cost of care for her autistic child, they built a factory to cover the cost. The factory is her family’s “kitchen table.”

Is it just me or does this seem a little out of touch with reality? (It is Day One and already I cannot take it anymore.)

Is there any chance that good fortune and timing might have helped Sher? Ok, maybe that sounds cynical. Let’s say she has extraordinary talent, is it fair to say that not everyone is as gifted? Besides, maybe everyone doesn’t want to start a business! What would we do with 300,000 million factories in this country? Seems kind of crowded to me, if not entirely unlikely…or impossible.

Let’s imagine that the Republican myth — heavily stewed in the simple-minded fiction of Ayn Rand — is correct. Let’s say everyone can take care of himself or herself if they apply the right ethic. Am I to believe then that everyone will own factories and earn millions? And if you’re unwilling to be a captain of industry, then you should be left in the gutter — with your kids and grandma too — to suffer the consequences of your laziness?

God Help Us…

Ok, maybe everyone won’t build a factory; perhaps you can start a business offering therapy to stressed out factory owners. Would that work?

One third of Americans believe they are in the economic top 10 per cent. Obviously that is impossible, but it fits conservative logic. In fact, Republicans appear to suggest that everyone can be in the top ten per cent. Not only will it get awfully crowded at the top, but that is impossible, too. (Cons find math perplexing.) So someone is going to be left out. Is it you?

God, I don’t know…but I do recall lessons in history. There were other governments founded on the idea that the superior should reign and to hell with the rest. Is that the ethic we want to live by?

You don’t have to listen very closely to hear that the Republican Party really isn’t about people anyway. Corporations already have their way with us and if you are in Romney’s camp corporations are people, too. No, Republicans don’t worry too much about corporations, at least not in the current side show, but they do seem to be all about small business, which appears to be the GOP‘s primary constituency tonight.

Listening to an hour of convention speeches is enough to prove it. Each speaker has talked about how urgent it is that government serves small business, because, as Republicans are saying tonight, they “built it.”

Did they build the state universities, the freeways, and the public utilities that serve us all, rich and poor alike? (Or at least used to…) Did they enact the environmental and financial laws that protect us from reckless excess that destroys our common interests? How about the public investment that has gone into research, health, social services and more?

(As an aside, how many jobs have Democrats created? None?? Of course that isn’t true; Democrats create jobs and work, too. And isn’t a public worker a worker? Don’t we need public workers? As taxpayers we invest in public services and those services create jobs. Therefore we are indeed all job creators.)

In short, these people don’t get it. The United States is not a business and it cannot be run like a business. People, not business, should be the priority of government. As Lincoln advised, we should defend a “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” which highlights the importance of equality and democracy for all. Are you hearing that from the conservative speakers tonight?

We can all be critical of our recent past for many and varying reasons. The question to ask is what are conservatives offering that is different. We have been through their ideas of less is more, we are living its results now. Do we really want more of this?